Daily Faceoff Archetype Rankings: The NHL’s 18 best puck distributors

Part III in a Series

With all due respect to the NHL’s 1980s glory years and those gaudy numbers, we may be experiencing the golden era of passing and playmaking in hockey history right at this very moment.

Just watch Trevor Zegras flip the puck over the net. Or notice that Jonathan Huberdeau set the NHL record for most assists (85) in a single season by a left winger. Or consider that Johnny Gaudreau collected the most first (or primary) assists (37) in the salary cap era last season.

The creativity, the vision and the execution have likely never been better. And not every pass is equal. Analytics has shown that the key to scoring in today’s NHL is the completion of cross-ice passes to get goaltenders moving. Those assists are a big reason why, when it’s harder than ever to score on big and bulky goaltenders, goals were scored at a rate (6.28 goals per game) not seen since the 1995-96 season.

For the third part of our Daily Faceoff Archetypes Ranking project, where we’re sorting top players into nine different classification categories, we were challenged with projecting the 18 best Distributors for the 2022-23 NHL season. Since players can only be included in one classification bucket, in some ways, you could name some of the best passers in the game off the top of your head.

For these purposes, the definition of a Distributor is the player whose first instinct is to make a play, not shoot. They are an elite passer, creative with the puck, typically strong in tight areas, and someone who consistently and reliably connects with teammates in scoring areas to create scoring chances.

Naturally, you’d think of guys continually near the top of the assist rankings, such as Gaudreau, Huberdeau, Artemi Panarin and Mitch Marner. They all made the cut, of course, since they were not classified among the 17 “Franchise” players.

The tougher part of the exercise was finding players who may not have originally stuck out as the elite of the elite distributors, or might be candidates to fit in other classification categories, such as shooter or power forward. With the help of five anonymous NHL front office executives, here are Daily Faceoff’s Top 18 projected Distributors for the 2022-23 season, with their league-wide rank from last season in those categories:

Rank	Player	Pos	Age	Team	Assists	First Assists	First Assist %	Completed Pass/G	Score Chance Pass	Shot Prod Pass	Under Pressure
1	Artemi Panarin	LW	30	NYR	74	23	31%	5	7	4	21
2	Jonathan Huberdeau	LW	29	CGY	85	19	22%	8	5	7	3
3	Mitch Marner	RW	25	TOR	62	22	35%	11	3	11	35
4	Johnny Gaudreau	LW	29	CBJ	75	37	49%	15	2	3	57
5	Jack Hughes	C	21	NJD	30	10	33%	18	22	15	28
6	Clayton Keller	C	24	ARI	35	14	40%	10	84	20	16
7	Mathew Barzal	C	25	NYI	44	13	30%	21	18	5	40
8	Mark Scheifele	C	29	WPG	41	12	29%	9	27	12	14
9	Evgeny Kuznetsov	C	30	WSH	54	13	24%	24	31	25	31
10	Kevin Fiala	LW	26	LAK	52	21	40%	35	24	22	33
11	Robert Thomas	C	23	STL	57	24	42%	43	9	36	67
12	Mats Zuccarello	LW	35	MIN	55	19	35%	27	17	21	92
13	Claude Giroux	LW	34	OTT	44	9	20%	28	64	31	42
14	Taylor Hall	LW	30	BOS	41	19	46%	116	20	23	22
15	Nick Suzuki	C	23	MTL	40	12	30%	42	46	34	17
16	Jesper Bratt	LW	24	NJD	47	15	32%	47	21	19	160
17	Nicklas Backstrom	C	34	WSH	25	7	28%	22	52	64	75
18	Jakub Voracek	RW	33	CBJ	56	24	43%	39	28	15	145

Data powered by Stathletes

LEGEND:
First Assist %: Percentage of assists that were the first assist on a goal.
Number for categories indicated below is league-wide rank in 2021-22 season
Comp Pass/GP: Completed passes per game
Score Chance Pass: Completed passes where the receiver produces a scoring chance.
Shot Prod Pass: Completed passes where the receiver shoots prior to losing possession.
Under Pressure: Completed passes in which the passer is within a stick length of the opposition.

There was no shortage of players under consideration, including Pavel Buchnevich, William Nylander, Teuvo Teravainen and Trevor Zegras. Nylander is perhaps better classified in another category. And Zegras was knocking on the door from his rookie season in Anaheim but didn’t quite have the numbers to make the cut.

Indeed, Panarin, Huberdeau, Marner and Gaudreau are all such elite Distributors that they warranted significant consideration for the Franchise category. They fell just short.

Another question considered was whether a defenseman should be worthy of the Distributor category. For instance, research with the help of Stathletes found that Vancouver Canucks defenseman Quinn Hughes completed a staggering 300 more passes over the course of last season than any other player in the league. He completed 3,465 passes, according to Stathletes, when the league average was just 776. In the end, we felt while Hughes is an unquestioned elite distributor, he falls into a different classification bucket.

In addition, there was less of an emphasis placed on accuracy, and more on the ability to consistently get the puck to a place where the receiver turns it into a scoring chance. Part of that includes a reliance on teammates. Clayton Keller’s numbers (and ranking) suffered because his teammates couldn’t turn his passes into shots or scoring chances as often. One executive wondered aloud whether Keller and Marner’s point production would be all that different if they switched teams, a major vote for Keller’s ability. Veteran Capitals center Nicklas Backstrom is the NHL’s most accurate passer, completing 80 percent of his dishes, but he was less successful on a per-game basis in helping produce scoring chances – and he is expected to miss a significant chunk of this upcoming season with injury.

Kevin Fiala, Nick Suzuki and Jesper Bratt all earned significant praise coming off their breakout seasons – and all have been paid accordingly as among the elite Distributors in the NHL.

Up Next: Shooter

Part I: Franchise Players
Part II: Clutch Players

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Daily Faceoff Archetype Rankings: The NHL’s 18 best puck distributors

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